Last week, I went on a short holiday to Co. Cork, and since I seem to be a workaholic, I did A LOT of mapping. One of the things I had on my to-do list was mapping local bus routes, because I personally depend on them (because I care about the planet and don’t drive) and because they are barely mapped. Part of the reason being that some of the bus routes are fairly new. Obviously, I didn’t want to spend all my days on the bus, so I only mapped the ones I actually needed to take to get from one accommodation to the next. That was Youghal to Timoleague and then back to Cork (because the first trip was during the week and the second on a Saturday, so the bus schedule was different). I had met two women in my accommodation in Timoleague who were also only travelling on public transport, one from Dublin, one from California. They both agreed that it was very difficult, because the timetables aren’t available or do not match the actual departure time of the bus. Also, to book a ticket for Bus Éireann (which is not even possible for all their buses), you need to know the exact name of the bus stop you’re going to. You’re not gonna know that unless you know the bus stop. Some of the bus stop names refer to landmarks which are gone (pub/ shop names). So you end up asking a lot of locals to find out where the bus leaves, because a high percentage of local bus stops don’t even have a sign to mark them as bus stops. So anyway, I made a start on the routes 237, 239 and 253 using OSMTracker for Android. I guess it would be good to add payment method as well, because most of those buses only take cash and some buses (in Dublin) only take the exact change, which is something important to know.

Obviously, I did way more mapping like vacant buildings, benchmarks and jostle stones (overpass-turbo) as well as addresses (Youghal needed it).